There
have been many articles and books written over the years
trying to untangle the murky pre-history of robotic
combat in the United States. Many people trace the roots
back to engineering competitions at MIT, CalTech and
other universities in the 1970's, while others look to
the San Francisco performance artists of the 1980's and
their monstrous mechanical creations. For most
enthusiasts, though, their first exposure to the sport
was in 1994 when Marc Thorpe organized the first Robot
Wars competitions in San Francisco.

But Thorpe was far from being the first. In fact, it was
eight years earlier in Denver that the seeds of robotic
combat were first sown. An engineer by the name of Bill
Llewellyn got together with a group of like-minded
friends and formed the "Denver Mad Scientists Club" and
organized a competition where people constructed
autonomous robots to complete a simple race. He called
it the "Critter Crawl" and it was met with great
interest.

As Bill recalls, "Everyone came up to us afterwards and
said that as cool as the event was, it would be so much
cooler if the robots actually fought each other."

So, in 1987, Bill and his mad scientist cohorts
developed a simple set of rules for cable and
RC-controlled robots and launched the very first
"Critter Crunch" at the MileHiCon science fiction
convention. The event has been held at the convention
every year since, making it easily the oldest and
longest-running robotic combat event in the world. But
the story doesn't end there. In fact, it takes a
strange—and decidedly southern—twist when in 1991, a
disc jockey by the name of Kelly Lockhart got a copy of
the rules and talked it over with the then chairman of
the Dragon*Con science fiction convention to see if they
thought it would be possible to stage a similar event in
Atlanta, Georgia.

They decided to go for it, had the rules published in a
convention flyer, and then set aside a clear space near
the loading docks of the Atlanta Hilton & Towers hotel
for the competitors that showed up to fight. Two showed,
and they fought their robots against each other until
one could no longer function. Even with just two robots,
a crowd of nearly 200 watched the action and wanted to
know how they could get involved the next year. And thus
"Robot Battles" was born.

The following year, the event was moved to a ballroom
with a sumo-style stage set-up (which is used to this
day) and an even-dozen competitors showed up to compete
in front of an audience over twice as large as the year
before. Intrigued by the response of both Robot Battles
and what Marc Thorpe was doing out west in San
Francisco, in 1994 Thorpe was invited to Dragon*Con to
co-host the event with Lockhart. While the Robot Wars
events were on a much larger scale, Thorpe appreciated
the enthusiasm that the Robot Battles competitors
brought to the event. So much so that he returned to
Atlanta in 1995 to co-host the competition for a second
year.

1996 was the first year that Lockhart started his
tradition of wearing his signature bizarre costumes on
stage as he hosts the event. Over the years, audiences
have been subjected to everything from full Roman
Centurion dress armor to the skinniest Elvis
impersonator they've ever seen to Monty Python's "Spamalot"
to a bizarre melding of Willy Wonka and The Joker. In
fact, the only time Lockhart has not worn a costume on
stage since 1996 was in 2009 when he was recovering from
being accidentally knocked down a flight of stairs the
night before by an intoxicated Klingon.

In 1997, Robot Battles moved from the Atlanta Hilton
into a full theater complex in the Atlanta Apparel Mart,
which coincided with a dramatic increase in attendance
and participation. This can be directly linked to the
spread of the Robot Wars publicity and several
television shows that took a direct look at what Marc
was doing in San Francisco. The following year, Robot
Battles not only moved into a larger hall—the 800 person
capacity Regency Ballroom of the Hyatt Regency
Atlanta—but was also staged on a smaller scale at the
January Chattacon convention in Chattanooga, Tennessee,
marking the first time that the event had been held
separate from Dragon*Con. The move into a larger
facility and the continued spread of awareness about
robotics sports made for a record event, with more
robots and a larger crowd ever before.

But what really kicked off the growth and popularity of
Robot Battles was when Battlebots debuted on Comedy
Central in 2000, and the heretofore underground sport
became a national obsession. Robot Battles responded by
adding weight categories and reaching out to schools and
universities to bring in new contestants, especially
younger ones. The result was incredibly positive, and
continues to this day. There are more teenage—and
younger—contestants participating in Robot Battles than
any other robotic combat event (not counting the FIRST
events, obviously, since they are not considered robotic
combat). And they are competing quite well. In fact, the
current record for youngest tournament winner is nine
years old, winning the 12 pound weight class in 2007 at
North Carolina's StellarCon competition.

In addition to expanding weight categories, Robot
Battles also began expanding from its Atlanta base in
the early part of the decade. Coming full-circle to
their roots in Denver, in 2003 Robot Battles came to the
Denver Opus Fantasy Arts convention with assistance from
Llewellyn and several other of the mad scientists. It
was that year that Lockhart was granted full membership
in the Denver Mad Scientists Club, something of which he
is quite proud and finds very amusing to add to his
resume. In 2009, Robot Battles moved even further south by hosting an event at the Orange
County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida in February
as part of the MegaCon convention, with a even larger
turnout (both in audience and contestants) in 2010.

One of the more unusual aspects of Robot Battles that
makes it stand out amongst the other competitions (aside
from its longevity and sumo-style rule set) is the
nature of how it is presented. Many longtime attendees
refer to the event as a combination robotic competition
and nightclub comedy act. There are many people who come
to the events as much for the on-stage antics as for the
competition itself.

Today, as we move into our third decade, Robot Battles
is larger and more popular than ever before. Our most
recent event in Atlanta (Robot Battles 67) had over
thirty teams who brought along over 80 robots to compete
in front of standing-room-only crowds of well over a
thousand fans each day.

We look
forward to see what happens in the future, and hope
you'll be with us for the ride.